Matt Stuff

Sunday, February 08, 2004

Barbie-Bonding

Spent the day/evening on the Cape with Karl's family. Karl's nephew and niece are 6 and 5 respectively. Actually, today was Katie's birthday. I love babies and enjoy kids, but have always found it difficult to communicate with toddlers. I just don't know what to do/say. Anyway, both Katie and Nick have reached the age where I can understand what they say and can now enjoy "hanging" with them.

Today was really fun after Katie opened her bday gifts --- she adores Barbie dolls. She is a girl after my own heart. I mean, body politics aside --- Barbie totally rules. Anyway, Katie was quite concerned about getting her new Barbies out of their decorative boxes so she asked me if I would help her and not hurt them. I thought this would be simple, but Barbies are now packaged in a most complex manner. These magical dolls are now tied and sewn into the boxes! It is Barbie bondage, but it does protect them --- if one is very careful with the cutting of the strings --- their hair styles emerge from the packaging in perfect condition!

Anyway, Katie was lucky enough to receive the Swan Lake Odette Barbie with movable and glowing wings! So, I explained Swan Lake to Katie and her bother. It was much fun --- we had no Ken to be our Prince, but the Horse-Riding Barbie was suitably butch to serve as the Prince. I simplified the story of the ballet and we acted out a rather violent/cartoon-like version of the sad story --- it seems that while Katie is quite concerned with getting her Barbie dolls safely out of packaging --- she is not too concerned with throwing them up into the air and banging them about. We had much fun.

Karl has always told me that we need to be the totally cool uncles. So, I think we need to take Katie and Nick for a weekend this coming December and see "The Nutcracker" and go about the city of Boston for a weekend of fun for the under 8 set. It will be a blast.

We close on our Salem condo tomorrow and then sell our car. The closing of the Salem chapter of our lives. On to further adventures in the big city!